Two intersections top city’s car crash hit list
Two awkward, peculiar intersections — one at County Road 42 Lauzon Parkway and the other at Dougall Avenue and Ouellette Place — are the runaway leaders for car crashes in Windsor.
This is according to a 2017 Road Safety Report that also shows an alarming 24 per cent rise in injury collisions throughout the city for the year — compared to the fiveyear average from 2013 to 2017. The report also shows a steady eight-per-cent rise for all collisions, to 4,464.
Meanwhile, the number of people injured increased 25 per cent. “It’s definitely a concern, but it’s something we all have to work together on,” Windsor police spokesman Const. Andrew Drouillard said of the latest numbers. Collected by Windsor police for an annual report by city engineers, they’re meant to help identify problem areas so police can re-focus their enforcement resources and so the city can make safety improvements.
“I think people need to respect that driving is a privilege and there are dangers when driving on the road and that’s why it requires 100 per cent of your attention and you have to drive free of all distractions,” Drouillard said, citing a continuing rise in texting-while-driving and other forms of distracted driving. According to the report, the total number of inattentive drivers in collisions numbered 689 in 2017, a 25-per-cent rise compared to the five-year average.
City engineer Mark Winterton said that to truly find out why many of the collision numbers are higher, you would have to study them more intensely. But he said one definite factor is heavier traffic volumes. “There is more traffic for sure,” he said. “Our population has gone up, our unemployment has gone down, there’s more cars on the road.” Many of the intersections at the top of the lists are well known by the city, he added. The Lauzon Parkway/County Road 42 intersection, for example, will eventually be fixed as part of a massive overhaul of the road system in that area, including extending Lauzon Parkway to the 401.
The current intersection has had 87 collisions from 2013-2017, ranking it No. 1 for collisions per million vehicles among all signalized intersections. Lauzon/County Road 42 is the first problem Ward 9 Coun. Hilary Payne heard about from residents when he was first elected in 2010. “People are upset about the duality of the traffic lights,” he said, referring to the fact the intersection is actually a pair of T-intersections in very close proximity, with lights at each crossing.
“It’s just an unfortunate situation that those two roads don’t line up,” said Payne.
Winterton said he hopes to get funding approved to realign that intersection as early as next year’s capital budget. “I want to get moving on that for sure,” he said. The Lauzon/County Road 42 intersection has been the worst signalized intersection for years. When it comes to non-signal intersections, the same can be said of the Ouellette Place/Dougall Avenue configuration. It requires the long line of drivers merging from Dougall near the Naples Pizza onto Ouellette to crane their necks backward to check for oncoming cars. There were 71 accidents there in five years, well ahead of secondplace Riverside Drive East/Devonshire Road, which had 28 and is slated for a new roundabout as early as this year. “There’s obviously some real challenges in that area,” Ward 10 Coun. Paul Borrelli said of the Dougall/Ouellette intersection. Further south on busy Dougall Avenue is the notorious “Dougall Death Trap,” where the absence of sidewalks or bike lanes under the CN Rail overpass has prompted budgeting for a pedestrian/bike tunnel.
City officials are awaiting word on financial help from the province as they continue talks with CN about building the tunnel.
“But that’s only part of the solution, the other part is a major restructuring according to the Central Box Study of that area,” said Borrelli, referring to an expensive plan to revamp bottlenecks in the area, including fixing the Ouellette/ Dougall intersection.
“It’s in the works, it’s not like we’re sleeping on this, but it will require a big investment, like everything else.”
One of those other big investments is the estimated $30 million to convert the Banwell Road/E.C. Row signalized intersection into an interchange.
That intersection had the secondhighest number of collisions over five years (131), most of them rear enders where vehicles are backed up trying to make a left turn from the expressway.
Four of the Top 6 signalized intersections for collisions per million vehicles are in Coun. Irek Kusmierczyk’s Ward 7. They include Banwell/E.C. Row, Lauzon Road/ Lauzon Parkway/McHugh Street, Tecumseh Road East/Forest Glade Drive and Lauzon Parkway/Tecumseh Road East, which had 147 crashes over five years, the most of any intersection.
Other Top 10 signalized intersections for crashes include: Wyandotte St. West/Pelissier Street, Grand Marais Rd. East/Central Avenue, Tecumseh Road East/ Howard Avenue, Huron Church Road/University Avenue West and Northwood Street/Dominion Boulevard, which is also slated for improvements.
The Top 10 non-signalized intersections include: Norfolk Street/ Dominion Boulevard, Wyandotte St. E./Marentette Avenue, the E.C. Row off-ramp at Dougall Ave., Wyandotte St. E./Langlois Avenue, Erie Street/Parent Avenue (recently turned into a roundabout), Beals Street West/Dougall Ave., South National Street/Jefferson Boulevard and Hanna Street West/ Ouellette Avenue.